Space Explored

Around 10 p.m. EST on January 17, Phantom Space Inc. tweeted a photo that appeared to show a development model of their Daytona launch vehicle at one of their facilities. However, Space Twitter was quick to notice inconsistencies within the photo which were on par for a render…

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NASA is returning astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s, but first the space agency must develop a new rocket capable of reaching lunar orbit. Space Launch System is that rocket, and it’s been in development for several years.

Over the weekend, NASA’s Stennis Space Center in South Mississippi conducted a critical engine test on the core stage of Space Launch System and its four RS-25 engines. While these engines aren’t new — they actually date back to use on the space shuttle — but being configured on a rocket to the Moon is untested.

The epic engine test wasn’t a total success, however, as the vehicle detected an anomaly and stopped firing its engines well before the required test duration. The good news is NASA says both the rocket core stage and its engines remain in good shape.

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Virgin Orbit attempted its second demonstration launch on Sunday after their first attempt failed shortly after the first stage ignition last year. This time around they didn’t just launch a mass simulator but actual payloads from NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program ElaNa 20 which contained several CubeSats from universities across the nation.

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Space Explored’s Zac Hall and Seth Kurkowski are joined by the amazing Austin Barnard to discuss the latest with SpaceX’s Starship SN9 test flight, preview NASA’s Space Launch System Green Run test, Blue Origin’s recent New Shepard NS-14 mission, and more.

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Signed on the 45th anniversary of the final crewed mission to the Moon, Space Policy Directive 1 directed NASA to begin a mission to send the next man and first woman to the Moon with a pathway to continue onto the crewed exploration of Mars. Since then, the Artemis program has expanded to include already existing programs as well as new commercialized contracts for new services.

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How would history divert from reality if the United States had lost the Space Race to the Soviet Union in the 1960s? Ronald Moore’s “For All Mankind” on Apple TV+ explores an alternative timeline in which America is second to the Moon in season one of the sci-fi series.

“We’re concerned the Soviets might be trying to introduce a new weapon.” That’s how the alt history storyline picks up in the midst of a Cold War escalation during the 1980s in season two. Today we have the most detailed look at what unfolds next as NASA struggles with a takeover by the Department of Defense.

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NASA released a new analysis today that concludes that 2020 tied for the warmest year on record with 2016, continuing our planet’s trend of slowly but surely getting warmer over the past seven years.

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OneWeb put out a press release on Wednesday detailing plans to reduce the size of its proposed satellite constellation substantially. Initially planned to include nearly 48,000 satellites, the updated plan now calls for only about 6,400 in an attempt to reduce the overall cost of the project.

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NASA’s InSight lander was launched back in 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V rocket and was the first interplanetary mission from California. The lander made it safely to the surface of Mars on November 26, carrying new experiments to learn more about Mars subsurface science.

The two big experiments that took the ride to the Red Planet were a seismometer and “self-hammering nail” to study the thermal properties below the surface of Mars nicknamed “the mole”. The mole ran into problems almost right away after it was lifted off the top of the lander and placed on the ground in late 2019.

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Meyya Meyyappan, a 66-year-old senior NASA scientist in California, has just pleaded guilty before a US District Judge in Manhattan. The charges brought forth include making false statements to the FBI, NASA, and the USAO about his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Program.

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After a week of attempting to conduct a second static fire following what we believed was an off-nominal test last week. SpaceX pushed SN9 in their testing and conducted not just 1 but 3 static fires over the course of the day.

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Blue Origin is launching a New Shepard rocket for its NS-14 mission from West Texas today at 11:57 a.m. EST (16:57 UTC). NS-14 is the first mission for Jeff Bezos’ rocket company in 2021 and only the third New Shepard mission in the last 13 months.

In the future, Blue Origin plans to fly passengers on the New Shepard vehicle. The suborbital rocket travels to the Karman line that defines space then lands near the launch site. Passengers will see the planet from space and experience zero gravity for a few magical minutes before returning to the surface of Earth.

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This Saturday NASA and their contractors are planning on conducting the final Green Run test for NASA’s Artemis-1 core stage of the Space Launch System rocket. This will be the only time the stage will be fired for a full 8 minutes before its flight.

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NASA has had the goal over the years to grow the commercial space market by moving design, development, and operations of spacecraft over to commercial partners rather than the government agency. Instead of NASA being the only place for researchers to go for getting payloads to space, NASA has become more of a customer of commercial spacecraft providers

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Today officially marks the 3,000th day since the Mars rover Curiosity first arrived at the Martian planet. While this may be a long time by any measure, it got us wondering, what’s the longest period that any rover has spent on Mars?

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After a year of a long testing campaign, NASA and Boeing at Stennis Space Center are ready to conduct the final test for the Space Launch System core stage before it is handed over to the launch team at Kennedy Space Center.

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The Black Vault is a website that contains many of the US government’s declassified documents. The site was recently updated to include an archive of PDFs containing all of the CIA’s declassified UFO documents going back to the 1980s. And the best part is that anybody with an internet connection can download all of these files safely and easily now.

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After being pushed back on Monday due to bad weather in its primary Atlantic Ocean landing zone, SpaceX’s CRS-21 Dragon cargo capsule successfully undocked from the International Space Station this morning. This follows a change to its primary splashdown point to the other side of Florida.

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Space has been called the final frontier by many influential figures throughout the years, and for good reasons. The dark, cold vacuum of space is dangerously unforgiving and reminds us that humans aren’t meant to go there. But as usual, curiosity has prevailed, and humans have made their mark in space, and we continue to do so today. 

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SpaceX CRS-21 has completed its mission to the International Space Station after launching from Kennedy Space Center in early December. Its next mission is to return cargo from the station back to NASA sometime this week.

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Editor’s note:

This week Space Explored welcomes Astrid Cordero as our newest contributor. Born in Venezuela and based in Orlando, Florida, Astrid is a lifelong student of the space industry and an experienced photographer with a passion for sharing her excitement for space.

SE in Español is a new column that collects the top Space Explored stories of the week, explained in Spanish from Astrid’s perspective, that will run each Sunday. Please welcome Astrid (@Astronaut_87) and share our latest column!

— Zac Hall, Space Explored founder and managing editor

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Nota del editor:

Esta semana, Space Explored, da la bienvenida a Astrid Cordero, como nuestra colaboradora. Nacida en Venezuela y establecida en Orlando FL, Astrid tiene larga trayectoria de estudio en la Industria Espacial así como una experimentada fotógrafa con una gran pasión en compartir sus emociones por el espacio. 

SE en Español es una nueva columna que recolecta las mejores historias de la semana de Space Explored, explicadas en español desde la perspectiva de Astrid y la cual se publicará cada Domingo. Por favor demos la bienvenida a Astrid (@Astronaut_87) y comparte nuestra última columna! 

Zac Hall, fundador de Space Explored y editor gerente 

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With a very eventful year in the wraps, we expect a lot of companies to make big moves in space this year. Across the decade, many startups have worked tirelessly to get their business on the ground by developing new launchers and spacecraft to disrupt the industry. As we look to the year ahead, a major theme in 2021 will be the ultimate tests of many of these new advancements in space. These are the stories we’re following throughout the year:

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NASA has selected four astrophysics mission concepts that will be in the running to join its Pioneers program. These concepts will undergo a full concept study by NASA, and if everything checks out, they will formally become part of the program.

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